George H. Gordon, From Brook Farm to Cedar Mountain

[160] the lordly slave-owner fleeing before the strong arm of a Northern force; they had seen those of whom they had heard nought but scoffs and jeers moving with their solid columns in terrible retribution over the blue ridges of their mountain confines, across the green fields in the valleys of the Shenandoah, into the homes of their owners, sitting as masters at their firesides, eating as masters at their tables, and protecting their wives and their children. Truly might the slave see the hour of his deliverance, and know that the hand of God was moving manifestly upon the waters. Since that day the light tread of our column has given place to a heavier tramp. Year after year the iron hoof of war has ploughed up that beautiful valley, until desolation marked it for its own. If the poor woman then sitting at the head of a table which was surrounded by myself and my staff still lives, she will remember that in those early days of 1862 I said to her, “Your people are mad; they are raising a storm that will not subside. To-day we are taking your food and your cattle; but to-morrow, so far does the living force of powerful armies outrun our realizations, to-morrow it may be your homes.” Let the blackened walls of the houses of the Shenandoah Valley be my witness.

But what had become of Jackson? We had rumors that he had turned off from the valley of the North Fork, and was somewhere in the ridges of the Blue Mountains to the eastward, and in communication with Lee around Richmond. The whole of the valley gave evidence of his ruthless flight. Bridges burned to impede our pursuit was a greater injury to the industry of the inhabitants than to us: it might retard, but it did not bar, our progress. I was astonished at the evidence of forced service required by the enemy from the citizens of this valley; the mountains were filled with Virginians escaping from forced levies. Wandering sadly along by the side of the creek, near my